What is it about?
We present Fluxbot 2.0, a low-cost, Open-Source, mechatronic flux chamber designed to monitor soil carbon flux (CO2 exchange rate between soil and atmosphere). Using entirely off-the-shelf hardware, Fluxbot 2.0 offers greatly extended battery life, wireless data transmission, and demonstrates an excellent correlation to existing commercial gas analyzers.
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Photo by Lucie Hošová on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Soil carbon flux is a key metric used in carbon budgeting, an important method for modeling the effects of climate change. Right now, it's very difficult, expensive, and labor-intensive to obtain both spatial and temporal resolution (like that afforded by use of wireless sensor arrays) when measuring soil carbon flux. Fluxbot 2.0 lets ecosystem scientists and ecologists build their own wireless sensing array, with minimal technical expertise, fewer field hours, and less monitoring required. All for $317 USD per unit in parts.
Perspectives
Fluxbot 2.0 is about enabling ecosystem scientists and ecologists to conduct bigger and more ambitious experiments. With a handheld survey chamber, you're limited by the amount of time in the day (since hiking to locations is very time-consuming), and with an automatic chamber setup, you're limited by space and cost. Fluxbot is designed to help researchers obtain soil carbon flux with both spatial and temporal resolution, without breaking the bank (or your back, gas analyzers are quite heavy).
Connor Pan
Georgia Institute of Technology
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Fluxbot: The Next Generation - Design and Validation of a Wireless, Open-Source Mechatronic CO2 Flux Sensing Chamber, July 2024, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3674829.3675063.
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